Positive changes

Don’t laugh. This happens all the time! I’ve had people say to me that they would like things to change but they don’t want to change.

Photo: Contributed

Really, it is commonplace to see business people who say they want to make change and hire coaches or consultants and then insist on doing the same thing they’ve always done, over and over.

What happens? Well, especially in this economy, if they decide to not open up their awareness and actually shift – they struggle, terribly.

Their preference would be that the outside circumstances change, but here’s the thing, as long as they are trying to change the outside world, whether it’s in business or in personal life, they are fighting an uphill and ugly battle.

Quantum leaps and amazing turns of event happen when one changes their mindset, when one changes their conclusions about the way things are. You see, if you decide something is a certain way and will always be that way – you never allow for anything different.

You actually give your brain permission to stop looking for better alternatives. When you’re open to different possibilities, your brain actually starts scanning the environment to find evidence of how things could be different. As soon as you decide that this is the way it is, BOOM, full stop on the full scan and now your brain goes to work to find evidence to prove your decision right.

Let me give you an example.

A business owner believes they have a great product and is priced right. They also believe that this is a slow time of year for selling their product.

Which of these is a conclusion?

Both.

Do either inspire other infinite possibilities for change and more or better sales?

Nope.

What happens? They might advertise or they might not based on their past experience. They might decide to go out and network (often with the enthusiasm of a newt). There’s a bunch of other things they might do but with the hope things will change but without the conviction that they will.

If we’re lucky, they might start to ask questions. Unfortunately, they might ask questions like ‘why aren’t people buying?’ or ‘why aren’t my staff selling more?’. Typically, ‘why’ questions don’t take us out of the box of what we’ve already concluded. In this case, the answer this business owner might come up with is ‘oh yeah, people never buy this time of year’ and ‘my staff needs sales training’.

What this business owner has totally by-passed is the opportunity to take a quantum leap. They’ve accessed their experience and what they already know but haven’t stepped outside of their own box. It might feel like they’re stepping outside of their box by thinking of getting sales training for staff but staff needing sales training could be a symptom and not the cause and therefore even with sales training, NOTHING CHANGES.

What if, instead, they revisited whether or not their product is still great. What if they revisited whether or not their product is actually still needed. (Yes, the people at Kodak could have revisited that idea earlier!) What if they revisited whether or not their product is priced right? What if they revisited the idea that this is a slow time of year and then entertained that that wasn’t true?

Do you think that business owner would encounter something different? Do you think they would open themselves up to other possibilities?

Answer: Most definitely YES. I do this with my private clients and changes happen quickly.

Here is the most amazing practice, by asking different questions that are not ‘why’ questions, you open yourself up to a new awareness. When you’re not coming to a conclusion automatically and assuming that everything you think and believe is the absolute truth forever, you actually have a chance of changing things in your favour.

When you stop waiting for everything and everybody else to change to accommodate you, your life and your business – SHAZAM! Things change for the better.

AND!! It gets easier because you’re not constantly pushing uphill.

When you make the change from the inside and ask the right questions and then allow new possibilities to bubble up – my gosh, the sky is the limit.

If you keep doing the same old, same old - guess what you’ll get? Yup, the same old.

Now I understand that this will invalidate the idea that experience is king and tried and true principles work every time. I’ll be clear, I’m not saying that experience and tried and true is not valuable – I’m saying that you use your experience and the tried and true principles and QUESTION THEM instead of following them blindly.

Will this work in this situation? What else could I add? What have I decided is impossible and is that actually true?

I could go on and on with a whole variety of different questions but those are a couple to start.

Karen Luniw burst onto the scene with the advent of podcasting in 2006. Her podcast has been in the Top 10 in Self-Help on iTunes since and has accumulated a whopping 20 million + downloads in that time. Through her podcast, coaching and online programs, Karen advises Business Owners, Managers and Executives how to attract crazy-amazing opportunities more easily than they ever imagined so they can be living life exactly how they want.

Karen works in business and as VP of her local chamber has influenced her work with brand-new-to-business Solopreneurs, seasoned Entrepreneurs, Top International Sales Pros to International Lawyers, Hollywood Creatives and even a staff member of the Executive Office of the President of the United States. The trend of many of her clients is to move from their front line roles into VP or Chief Executive roles or to the top of the field in their business. Karen has been able to achieve this by sharing her powerful QC2 Method that literally demolishes any mindset blocks that get in the way of people's goals and dreams. The result? Quantum Leaps into Success and Infinite Possibilities.

It wasn’t always so exciting and glamorous. Having worked for years for non-profits, government contractors and social agencies – Karen has worked front line with some of society’s most dangerous, misunderstood and disenfranchised individuals...with success. Karen has been featured in the well-read Huffington Post, HuffPo Live, appeared on Global BC, and featured in The Financial Post and The Vancouver Sun and is a sought after speaker for business and women's groups.